Economics of Online Gaming

PGillingwater writes "The Walrus has a nice article up about the economics of on-line gaming communities. Starting with the original 2001 paper which shows that Everquest has a GNP greater than India, Bulgaria and China, and going on to the billionaires of Ultima Online and the Mafia takeover of The Sims. "He began calculating frantically. He gathered data on 616 auctions, observing how much each item sold for in U.S. dollars. When he averaged the results, he was stunned to discover that the EverQuest platinum piece was worth about one cent U.S. -- higher than the Japanese yen or the Italian lira. With that information, he could figure out how fast the EverQuest economy was growing. Since players were killing monsters or skinning bunnies every day, they were, in effect, creating wealth. Crunching more numbers, Castronova found that the average player was generating 319 platinum pieces each hour he or she was in the game -- the equivalent of $3.42 (U.S.) per hour. "That's higher than the minimum wage in most countries," he marvelled.""

Comments

I 'skin the bunny' every day too

[Anonymous Coward]

But it doesn't affect my economic situation at all. Should I use more lotion?

Making money fast

[91degrees]

Of course,m the problem here is you have to play the game to make money. One guy tried a scheme in Star Wars galaxies to automate this. Here's how well he did.

What about the UT2004 economy?

[eap]

I'm hatching a plan to steal Unreal Tournament 2004 vehicles from the other team and then sell them back on Ebay. You want that tank back, blue? It'll cost you!